BEIJING–Taking your kid to school is pretty well routine around the world.

But not if you happen to be Jiang Tianyong, a well-known human rights lawyer in China. One morning this month, Jiang set out for school from his Beijing home with daughter Kailai, 7.

They didn't get far. Plainclothes policemen blocked their path. "One policeman told me, `Our leader told us you're not to leave this building at all today,'" says Jiang.

The lawyer replied that his wife was ill, he had to accompany his child. The police didn't explain why Jiang's movement was being restricted, nor would they step aside.

Kailai started crying. Shouting ensued. Jiang's wife came down. Police knocked her to the ground and Jiang was driven off for 13 1/2 hours of questioning.

For Jiang, it was just another day of harassment in a country that, despite its well-known human rights record, everyone wants to woo. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper comes calling, on his first visit to China after nearly four years in office.

Harper once said of Canada-China relations that he wasn't about to sell out Canadian values for the almighty dollar. That might still be true, but his four-day tour will involve some tricky navigating.

"For a prime minister who has spoken powerfully about human rights and a values-based foreign policy, he has to tell us – the Canadian people – how it's in our values' interest to have a comprehensive relationship with China," says Paul Evans, a Chinese specialist at the University of British Columbia.

Evans recalls the Harper government's earlier view of China as "a Godless, totalitarian country with nuclear weapons aimed at us."

"Mr. Harper himself did not use those words. But members of his cabinet did," he says. So on what basis is the Harper government re-engaging China now?

The old arguments – that Canada could help bring China out of its isolation, or that economic liberalism would lead to political liberalism – are basically dead, says Evans.

A powerful China doesn't need Canada's help on the world stage. And, despite nascent liberal economics, the authoritarian government is as entrenched as ever. There's a new reality afoot.

For a Conservative government that has repeatedly stressed its values-based foreign policy, explaining the re-engagement poses real challenges. "Engagement with China is now more important," Evans says. "But it's also more morally complex. We need a new rationale for the relationship."

For much of the past year, the government has been laying the groundwork for Harper's visit. A long list of ministers has trekked to Beijing. Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon alone has had three meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

Seasoned bureaucrats, once rebuffed by the Harper government as Liberal lackeys on the China file, have recently seen their expertise re-engaged, sources say.

In recent days, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Hong-Kong based group representing Chinese nationals in China and abroad, sent a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to push the rights agenda.

"Neither economic growth nor promises of trade should blind us to this reality," the letter to Harper said. "We stand wholeheartedly behind engagement with China," it continued, "but it must be a principled and coherent engagement, firmly rooted in universal values."

The organization urged Harper to seek the release of political prisoners, including lawyer Chen Guangcheng and activist Hu Jia.

Cannon, in a briefing with Chinese journalists in Ottawa last week, said economic cooperation would top the agenda on Harper's trip. Canada, however, would continue to raise human rights issues, he said.

Those discussions will take place behind closed doors this week, and while Harper can be expected to confirm them, he isn't expected to disclose details. That would be impolitic on Chinese soil. Back home, however, he'll need to explain the mission.

"How is the Prime Minister going to explain to Canadians that the playing field is changing, that we have to work with China, rather than convert it to our way of thinking on all issues?" Evans says. "We cannot assume that freedom, democracy and human rights, as we know them, are inevitably the path that China is going to go down."

The world has changed and Canadian thinking will have to change with it. Jiang says he hopes Harper also meets people who are trying to build China's new civil society.

"I hope he doesn't talk just about business and trade. Still, my overall feeling is that Canada is a country that will keep its word on human rights," Jiang says.